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Specifically, I feel like we're reaching the end of a liminal period in time, bookended on one side by the hubristic Western confidence of the triumphant post-Cold War period, best embodied by the fall of the Berlin wall (to the tune of The Scorpions' "Winds of Change") and Fukuyama's End of History; and, on the other, by the most recent indiscriminate and shameless reexamination of every 20th-century dogma about domestic politics, economic theory, foreign affairs, national identity, territorial sovereignty, the concept of money, and more. 2/9 1 reply
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“Wat do” — more than ever, I feel like a helpless observer of tidal events, so I will stoically refocus on my limited span of control: myself, my family, and the tiny part of our future that I can influence. Fluctuat nec mergitur.
I used to get riled up by political developments, say, in 2016 onward. It’s no longer the case. Maybe a case of shock fatigue, maybe I’m just getting older and indexing more heavily on equanimity.
China is indeed an unstoppable force, but I increasingly expect the immovable object (the US) to move out of the way (i.e., backpedal from the Indo-Pacific strategy). I won’t be surprised if Taiwan’s takeover is much more subtle and subdued than the full-scale, heads-on military amphibious assault that everybody seems to expect. Undersea cables will be cut, the island will be isolated and possibly embargoed, and history will take its course, not with a bang but a whimper.
And I agree that tech will reshape the landscape beyond recognition — even if the politics didn’t 0 reply
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